Chapter 2 - THE BROTHER IN THE MIRROR
“Hello, little brother.”
The voice came through Emily’s phone a second time.
Dante Romano did not move.
Neither did Theodore.
The abandoned storage room beneath the Hawthorne estate seemed to shrink around them.
Emily looked from Dante to the frozen image of her sister.
“Who is he?”
Dante’s eyes remained on the screen.
“Adrian.”
“My brother.”
Marcus Bell stared at him.
“I thought Adrian died in Brooklyn.”
“So did I.”
Theodore whispered Dante’s name.
Dante turned slowly.
“Don’t.”
One word.
Quiet enough to be worse than shouting.
Theodore’s mouth closed.
Dante replayed the video.
Rachel sat in a wooden chair, wrists visible and apparently unbound. She looked frightened, but not injured.
Behind her stood the broken mirror.
Adrian’s reflection appeared only briefly.
Older now.
Gray at the temples.
A scar running from his left ear beneath his collar.
But unmistakable.
Dante remembered that face at seventeen, laughing beside a busted motorcycle.
At twenty-two, bleeding after their first real fight.
At twenty-seven—
standing beside him outside that Brooklyn warehouse.
The memory struck so hard he almost hated Emily for having found the photograph.
Almost.
Then Rachel spoke in the video.
“Em, don’t come here.”
Emily stepped forward.
“Rachel.”
“Listen to me. Don’t come. They want the key and whatever was in that room.”
Clarissa’s voice cut in.
“That’s enough.”
The camera moved.
Rachel twisted toward someone outside the frame.
Then Adrian spoke again.
“Dante, ask Theodore what happened at 11:47 that night.”
The video ended.
The silence afterward was brutal.
Dante looked at Theodore.
“Eleven forty-seven.”
Theodore rubbed a hand across his mouth.
“I don’t remember.”
Dante took one step toward him.
“You went pale when you saw that photograph.”
“Because I recognized the warehouse.”
“You said you weren’t there.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Then why are you afraid of an empty storage room?”
Theodore’s jaw tightened.
Emily watched something old and painful pass between the two men.
Not merely suspicion.
History.
Thirty years of it.
Finally Theodore said, “Because that room belonged to my father.”
Dante stopped.
Emily frowned.
“Charles Hawthorne?”
Theodore nodded.
“My father had the east corridor sealed fifteen years ago.”
“And you never asked why?” Marcus said.
“I grew up in this house. There were dozens of rooms my father considered nobody else’s business.”
Dante held up the torn photograph.
“Was Brooklyn his business too?”
Theodore said nothing.
That silence was answer enough.
Emily’s legs suddenly weakened.
“My sister is sitting in that warehouse while you two discuss twelve-year-old secrets.”
Dante’s attention shifted immediately.
“You’re right.”
The anger in Emily’s face surprised him.
Maybe it surprised her too.
“You told me Rachel would be protected.”
“I said we would protect her.”
“She was taken before you even knew.”
“And now we know where she is.”
Emily moved toward the door.
Marcus blocked her.
“No.”
“Move.”
“No.”
“My sister is there.”
“And whoever sent that video expects you to come running.”
“I don’t care.”
Dante stepped between them.
“I do.”
Emily looked at him.
Her hacked hair framed her face unevenly. The humiliation from the greenhouse still showed every time she forgot to hide it.
But now fear had turned into something harder.
“If it were your brother sitting in that chair, would you stay here?”
Dante’s expression changed.
“That question stopped working twelve years ago.”
Emily regretted it immediately.
Then Dante looked at the frozen image of Adrian.
“Until tonight.”
He gave Marcus instructions.
No police yet.
Not because Dante wanted to protect criminals.
Because Rachel’s location had been deliberately revealed. Whoever controlled that building wanted someone to arrive.
Marcus would take four men and approach from neighboring blocks without entering.
Dante would go separately.
Emily said, “I’m coming.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Someone threatened your sister because of what you found. That makes you leverage.”
“That makes me the reason she’s there.”
“No.”
Dante’s voice hardened.
“That makes the person who took her responsible.”
Emily stared at him.
Something in that sentence reached past her panic.
But not far enough.
“I’m still coming.”
Dante studied her.
Then nodded once.
“You stay in the car unless I tell you otherwise.”
Emily almost argued.
Marcus cut in.
“Take the compromise, Emily.”
She did.
Before they left, Dante stopped Theodore in the corridor.
“You’re not coming.”
Theodore looked insulted.
“Rachel is my employee’s sister.”
“This isn’t about Rachel to you.”
Theodore’s face tightened.
“You don’t know what this is about.”
“No. Apparently I haven’t for twelve years.”
Dante turned away.
Theodore grabbed his sleeve.
A dangerous mistake with almost anyone else.
Dante looked down at the hand.
Theodore released him.
“There’s something you need to know before you go inside that warehouse.”
Dante waited.
Theodore struggled for several seconds.
Then failed.
“I need to be sure.”
Dante’s disappointment was worse than anger.
“You’ve had twelve years to be sure.”
He walked away.
---
Brooklyn looked smaller than Dante remembered.
The warehouse did not.
By 1:26 in the morning, snow had become freezing rain, coating the abandoned loading docks in glass.
Emily sat beside Dante in the rear of the SUV while Marcus spoke quietly through an earpiece.
“No movement on the south entrance.”
“West?”
“Locked. Fresh tire tracks near the loading bay.”
Dante stared through the windshield.
Emily noticed his right hand.
He kept rubbing his thumb across an old scar on his palm.
“Did you get that here?”
He glanced at her.
“What?”
“The scar.”
He stopped touching it.
“Yes.”
Emily waited.
Dante surprised himself by continuing.
“There was a fire.”
“The night your brother died?”
“The night I thought he died.”
“What happened?”
“My brother called me and said he had proof someone had been using Hawthorne freight containers for something they weren’t supposed to carry.”
“What?”
“He never told me.”
Dante looked at the warehouse.
“I arrived. We argued. He wanted to take the records to federal investigators. I told him we needed to understand who was involved first.”
“You didn’t trust him?”
“I trusted Adrian.”
His voice lowered.
“I didn’t trust anyone else.”
Emily thought of Theodore.
“Then?”
“An explosion.”
The windshield wipers swept once.
“I woke up outside. Theodore was there.”
Emily turned.
“You said Theodore wasn’t at the warehouse.”
“He told me he arrived afterward.”
“And Adrian?”
“They found blood. His coat. His watch.”
Dante’s mouth tightened.
“No body.”
Emily’s eyes sharpened.
“You believed he was dead because of a watch?”
“No.”
Dante looked at her.
“I believed he was dead because Theodore told me Adrian couldn’t have survived.”
That changed everything.
Before Emily could respond, Marcus’s voice entered the earpiece.
“Movement. East side.”
Dante opened the door.
“Stay here.”
This time Emily did not argue.
Not because she was obedient.
Because she had seen Dante’s face.
He was going inside to meet a ghost.
Twenty-two minutes passed.
Then thirty.
Emily counted every one.
At thirty-four minutes, headlights swept across the opposite wall.
A black sedan exited the loading yard.
Emily leaned forward.
“Was that them?”
The driver said nothing.
Then Emily saw something beneath the warehouse awning.
A woman.
Running.
“Rachel.”
She was out of the SUV before anyone stopped her.
“Rachel!”
Her sister turned.
“Emily!”
They collided halfway across the wet pavement.
Rachel wrapped both arms around her.
Emily buried her face in her sister’s shoulder.
“You’re okay?”
“I’m okay.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“No.”
“Clarissa?”
Rachel’s face changed.
“She wasn’t the one who brought me here.”
Emily pulled back.
“What?”
“I went with them.”
Emily stared at her.
Rachel swallowed.
“I thought they were going to show me why somebody had been following me.”
Before Emily could process that, footsteps approached.
Dante emerged from the warehouse.
Alone.
His face looked carved from stone.
“Where’s Adrian?” Emily asked.
“Gone.”
“He left?”
“He was never here tonight.”
Rachel shook her head.
“Yes, he was.”
Dante held something out.
An old silver wristwatch.
The glass was cracked.
Emily recognized nothing about it.
But Rachel did.
“That was on the table beside me.”
Dante turned the watch over.
The back had been engraved long ago.
A.R. — Don’t waste your time. Make it count. — D.
Dante had given it to Adrian for his twenty-fifth birthday.
The same watch Theodore had identified twelve years earlier as proof Adrian died in the fire.
Dante’s fingers closed around it.
Then Rachel whispered:
“Dante… Clarissa didn’t make that video.”
Everyone looked at her.
Rachel swallowed.
May you like
“Your brother did.”
---
